"hymnals" poems
Mother, the Word timeless Hymnals devote
Bore her Best Ribbon in Prayer and Gift
With the Earth her Nature's Theatre denote
Four Years Beyond; She would make her own Lift
I speak of the Fruit all may come to Love,
Branched with Four Maidens and a Knight do Sponsor
And the King, whose Black Gold sprouts well-above,
Branded Pride onto her; And gave her Honour
Well that their Woolen Rope I can't compete
Plus the Ring advised by the Prince of the North
Still, a Grounded Vow I plan to complete
For an Aunt called TRUST; And all that she's Worth.
Grateful much, M'am, for your Good Decision
Despite me Un-Known; The Owl you Rendition.
Mar 9, 2013
Mar 9, 2013 at 5:31 AM UTC
coloring inside the lines is impossibly bleak,
with a hissing noise
atomic locomotive
rounds the bend,
extrasensory perception is not
a mindless gift,
it's a train station in the clouds,
tracking all my starting points to you,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.
you leave in opera
with secrets and grievances
under the radar,
and your ready-made
wings catch in the power lines,
you're coiling like smoke
in the arches of my cathedral,
a sense of elegant decay
while sweeping up the debris,
committing arson
with the paraffin of my temporal lobe.
yesterday's fairground waltzes,
ghosted lullabies,
and woodland hymnals,
set in a context not of
resolution and closure,
but of contradiction and assimilation,
break the bond,
away they float on purveyor belts,
one too many molecules,
one too many departures,
always on the surface of everything,
nothing in the middle,
nothing at the end.
Feb 16, 2023
Feb 16, 2023 at 7:27 AM UTC
ghosts of slumber parties past.
just a haunted betamax & a stack of oreo sandwiches.
sisters braiding eachother’s hair far past the witching hour,
contemplating life without supervision.
blue house. yellow lawn.
silverback gorilla in one garage.
two garage: empty.
three garage: a woman entombed in exhaust.
[her bloated tongue]
a gang of bmx boys pizza-fed and friday-high,
hopped up on mountain dew and trading card collectible rituals ‘n rhythmics.
they conjure a demon just to **** and dismember it.
for funsies.
for keepsies.
a fang for the shrine at the foot of the old oak tree.
history on the skin, long history, long thoughts, long in the nod like a calm dead frog.
bubbled, boiled, toiled, and troubled.
the woods aren’t haunted.
you are haunted.
you are the conduit through which the darkness displays its vivid colors.
[treefort aflame]
the seasons furrow/
/ the leaves fall.
little plots of land etched out – subdivision and sprawl.
on the avenue, heaven
& hell made tame and tangible.
built, re-built, and refurbished – a lawn and a lantern.
a mortgaged glory of sparkle and decay.
[dead cat is a new cat is the old cat ran away]
pictograms of morning light display on mom’s face
as she instructs us on the gusts of love [scrambed eggs]
& teaches us the truth of nettles sprung
from violent pine.
[toast with raspberry jam]
the television.
the microwave.
the blender beverages.
hymnals of an electric kingdom.
one mom dances, the other expires.
[restless armless girls in orange sunsets]
girl with a gun at the edge of her lawn and selling lemonade.
girl in an old wicker chair.
save her horror story for another day.
boy with a bent frame bicycle limps his way home
from one end of the avenue to the other.
his pockets full of sparkly rocks found in the lime quarry pit.
one boy in a long line of lost planets.
the driveway.
the refrigerator.
the hum of a saturday night commercial-free cassette.
where’s dad?
the glow of an eerie crystal
(continued…)
Oct 20, 2015
Oct 20, 2015 at 6:18 AM UTC
The irreveracable state of falling moral
Piecing together newspaper dooms dayers
Always curious about generalized detachment
Yet unable to see the forest for the trees
Picket lines are home
Raging infernos of injustice and malcontent
Laying stoically at their doorstep
Wrapped messily in insomniac nightmares at yours
Big, BOLD letters voicing the masses
We are, We are
Oppressed, Depressed, Repressed
No longer though
Passing out the hymnals of our revolution
Unsatisfied but spent
I sit back and enjoy the show
Saturating my senses with the smell of burning GMO fields
Apr 6, 2012
Apr 6, 2012 at 10:13 AM UTC
universal ****
**** me so I can give birth to your beautiful slumdog millionare
you know what I mean?
the man wearing pants so tattered it doesn't matter why he's dancing?
I meant that when I said it and I said it when it meant so much to the
king of all castles running in circles around melancholy as if it were
a dog to be chased so catch your own tail, too big to fail, too big to
fail, ah, cleanliness has its way of speech and I will never be rid of
it's cancellation fees, but does that matter oh so much if clouds
understand me better than sand sees chord progressions in winter hymnals
sung by early risen bird from dust and snow?
I didn't think so either.
Feb 17, 2013
Feb 17, 2013 at 2:00 PM UTC
Unravel slow, lush
dew of flesh and fill
beyond the madness of desire
breathless, tangled
to become enraptured
in dreams hazel gleam
Crawl beneath skin
ripe, raw, dripping
trailing the arch of fragment with
divine tongues languid dagger
piercing luscious petals
'till bloom engulfs unyielding stem
singing hymnals of glory and ******
wiping away blasphemous obscurities
To birth nectar tears
brittle, full bodied
trickling paths to succulent lustre
conceived in parted thighs
spread open, and content
poised for immaculate rapture
of heated breaths, strung tight
Slick, prayed willing
for stretch and sting
to mark on fold and crevice
love's first gasp
spilled, infinite
blazed in merge
of clinging limbs
unwinding the woven...
Oct 31, 2012
Oct 31, 2012 at 4:28 PM UTC
It is Christmas Eve.
I sit idly, in slight discomfort on this wooden pew.
A glorified bench if you ask me.
I remember being a child, blissful and reverent.
I memorized sacred stanzas of prayer unaware of their meaning,
chanted them with everyone else.
I always thought God had excellent diction.
Now though I am puzzled.
For an American culture so ethnocentric, patronizing rituals in the third world and of other religions as silly;
Their own rituals are quite silly.
Transcending the mystery of creation for a moment now: having figured this a charade for the generational reproduction of virtue and morality inexorably tied up in the Americanization and Assimilation of society, that we might all move in one direction. That we might all create family units, buy houses, white picket fences, watch television on couches with children and consume, consume, consume... I deem it acceptable to be immoral.
Hymnals couldn't be more of a bore to me, prayers are empty.
But the girl three rows up is filling her dress quite nicely.
I wonder if she also is despondent, if her eyes wander.
I take a mental step back and realize how many girls are wearing high drawn dresses.
Are they showing off their flawless legs for the lord? Surely not.
They dressed that way for me.
The three rows up girl looks astray and catches my eye;
for a moment we have found our savior.
I make it a point to kneel next to her for communion,
brazen enough to tell her "That dress is something else."
She blushes and shoots me a seductive smile.
"Yes I'm wrapped up quite well aren't I? Only missing a bow."
Holding the body of Christ,
"That shouldn't be a problem, I'm quite good at unwrapping. These dexterous hands of mine."
Her body shifts to the left, her sinister side against my right.
I watch her take a rather large drink from the blood of Christ, she places her hand over mine as she braces to stand.
Our eyes flicker on again for an instant as she turns.
I'll be finding her.
The golden goblet seeks me next.
Bad wine posing as blood.
Like all these christian's faking it, it's quite suiting.
I wonder if they really believe they are drinking human blood?
And eating human flesh?
******* zombies man.
Dec 25, 2012
Dec 25, 2012 at 2:12 PM UTC
10,000 steps to a poem
<~>
walk to save my visions, my subterfuge-self, trying to
encapsulate the moments, seconds of nano-instances of a
tableau of histories, of actions becoming interactions,
a physical mitosis, ground into one human paste of word-cells
by a singular mortar and pestle that more than blends, but condenses
walk in Whitman’s footsteps, prowl old cobbled
streets seeing them anew, listening to the patois
of each skyward pathway, a commingling of
catechisms, Tefilot, Salah, Stuti Karana, into a stampede becoming a tornado funnel of a multivariate alphabets singularity - a prayer|poem returning to birth-mother
rush homeward desperate to retain the holy mess of verbal music,
before aged eyes release the visions, into a heavenly lost but found
depot of single lefty gloves, snatches and refrains, hymnals, phrases,
10,000 preservation band steps keeping but scraps, weeping
for the so much lost, yet blessing-uttering thankful for this one,
to a one
*who has kept us alive, sustained us, and brought us to
this moment, to this season.*
4/4/21
1:50pm
~writ by night, daylight born~
Apr 4, 2021
Apr 4, 2021 at 1:57 PM UTC
Spring at her height on a morn at prime,
Sails that laugh from a flying squall,
Pomp of harmony, rapture of rhyme--
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
Winter sunsets and leaves that fall,
An empty flagon, a folded page,
A tumble-down wheel, a tattered ball--
These are a type of the world of Age.
Bells that clash in a gaudy chime,
Swords that clatter in onsets tall,
The words that ring and the fames that climb--
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
Hymnals old in a dusty stall,
A bald, blind bird in a crazy cage,
The scene of a faded festival--
These are a type of the world of Age.
Hours that strut as the heirs of time,
Deeds whose rumour's a clarion-call,
Songs where the singers their souls sublime--
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A staff that rests in a nook of wall,
A reeling battle, a rusted gage,
The chant of a nearing funeral--
These are a type of the world of Age.
Envoy
Struggle and turmoil, revel and brawl--
Youth is the sign of them, one and all.
A smouldering hearth and a silent stage--
These are a type of the world of Age.
2.1k
Sun-bleached and fluttering,
a butterfly weaves around us.
“I wonder who that is?”
The sun bursts from Grandmother’s face.
By summer she had passed.
Everything was yellow, golden,
like pages from old hymnals.
Hazy sunlight passes through stained glass
and lands there on her face.
“Why are you crying? She’s right here.”
Cross-legged in the shade
of a spiraling cypress tree,
I say hello again.
Sunbeams pierce through
leaves and reflect off her
iridescent wings
and I know she’s at peace here in my palm.
The brevity of a butterfly.
The perfect vessel
for a wandering spirit.
Aug 18, 2014
Aug 18, 2014 at 9:05 PM UTC
I pressed my ear to the ***** of the
silence before dawn.This is the hour
when birds wake up, contemplating
on what to sing. The sky's smudged
in dispersing clouds. Priests are
washing up for the morning prayer.
Tots plead to sleep more. Here I find
the blessed light that trudged past
aeons and aether, now scattering
past the screen of mists, illuminating
your face, blooming over lotus lakes.
You were up, weeping with the winds
wheezing through the streets all night.
No bells, no flowers, no incense
rosaries or hymnals, this my chapel
is the other shrine in this home.
Now I kneel hearing the throb of love.
One, nameless, the continuum that
here I call myself and there, you.
Nov 15, 2014
Nov 15, 2014 at 5:46 AM UTC
on the steps of the notre dame
i lost my sense of color
every moonbeam through the
cracked walls of the House of God
danced around me like blue gypsies
performing a ritual upon
every ringlet of hair on my head
in the catacombs of paris
i lost my sense of touch
every skull feeling like silk
dead calcium caressing
the flesh beneath which
my bones were moving
alive and restless
beneath the arc de triomphe
i lost myself
the curve of stone caving in on me
like a Parisian Goliath
and I, a madman David
names of fallen soldiers
engraved upon the walls
breathed back to life
from dust they have returned
they reach into my cerebrum
their stone fingers pulsing
with the hymnals of war
to meet with the battle
of indigos and crimsons coursing
through every nerve of my anatomy
behind the eiffel tower
i lost my art
paris lights beating down
a beast sleeping through the
tides of eulogies and odes
its orphans have to offer
Mar 18, 2016
Mar 18, 2016 at 2:32 PM UTC
An old church at the end of the road
Sunflowers spill over the altar
For children grown old.
Alone in the pews
I watch light suffused
Through stained glass windows.
When I was young
And it was my turn
They gave us roses
Told us they still have thorns
Because life would hurt us
When we found it.
Most of us did.
Including me.
Most of us left those four walls.
Most of us moved far away.
Most of us never returned.
Except for me.
The dusty hymnals smell like youth.
The empty sanctuary looks like home.
And I can still see myself by the piano
The sound of my violin
Was bigger than the world.
When it's all over
I step outside and feel the cold.
I was so young.
And now I'm afraid.
I'm getting so old.
I don't know anyone
Filing out the door.
Nobody knows me.
I walk to the B&B.
I ask for a room.
I used to play there so often
They always let me stay for free.
The clerk says it's switched hands
A dozen times or more.
They say the chandelier
Hasn't heard a song in years.
I unpack my suitcase upstairs
And can't help but shed a few tears
For a town
That truly
Forgot
Me.
Jun 12, 2020
Jun 12, 2020 at 5:52 PM UTC
There is a hunger
Like a gun to yr head
Metal and cold
Empty yr clip
Personal ********
Egoic standup metaphysical *****
Pseudo spiritual people snakin in my garden
Workin gets harder
When you poet all the time
Clock you don't know what it looks like
A vague memory takes over me
At the corner on 15th and Rockford
I'm unheard and disturbed
No it's not ok
Know insanity like secondhand glove fit/spit atheists outta my mouth
Now you know what god Tastes like
Teeth know what gods about
Molar spell
Glamour silver
Share gardens worth of rent/have bent knees to cold Chicago concrete
Ask god
She's listening
With an open hand
Walk
Yr glistening sidewalk shine you concrete vision of glitter and litter
You performance piece about ennui
Sing
Sinner
Yr callouses
Don't ask how ok I am
We all got issues and I know you want a poem
But all I got is tissues and I didn't mean to make you cry
I jut wanted to remind you of the salt of life
The stuff dreams are made of
Homemade hair cloud spun
Wicked sister come whisper In my ear drum
Hum the chemical hymnals from our childhood
Don't hide your big tooth
Chew and chew and Chew
Purposefully at the great growing complacency
Oct 20, 2014
Oct 20, 2014 at 5:16 PM UTC
Old churches smell of Camphor
New churches get febreezed
New churches have soft benches
Old churches wreck your knees
Old churches have stained windows
New churches have foam walls
Old churches fill you up with dread
New churches look like malls
New churches have young pastors
Old churches, not so much
New churches have no feeling
Old churches hurt to touch
Old churches scream religion
New churches whisper "Hi"
New churches aren't forboding
Old churches make you cry
New churches full of speakers
Old churches you just yell
New churches all have daycare
Old churches threaten hell
Old churches full of people
New churches full of young
New churches and new hymnals
Old churches,,bells are rung
Old churches make you wonder
New churches keep you cool
New churches...air conditioned
Old churches are a jewel
Old churches...God is power
New churches...God's a friend
New churches....rules are broken
Old churches do not bend
Old churches are my background
New churches I don't know
Old churches full of stories
New churches full of show
Old churches there's confession
New churches there is not
New churches you say sorry
Old churches...it gets hot
New churches have no devil
Old churches he is there
New churches full of comfort
Old churches just to scare
No matter what religion
Be it new or be it old
Faith is one commitment
Forever,you should hold
Old churces are my favorite
New churches quench a thirst
But if I had a choice of one
I'd pick the old church first.
Write a comment...
..
Apr 28, 2012
Apr 28, 2012 at 12:43 PM UTC
The hangman
Riding town to town
In his creaky dusty black buggy
Sleepy eyed old mule pulling
Long-tailed fat round pet rat
Riding beside him
Both dressed all in dusty black
Neither smiling or frowning
From Tennesse to Missouri
Oklahoma then to Texas
Back again across the Mississippi
To Alabama or wherever called
Tools of his trade neatly bound
In back of the black buggy
A cheap hotel and clean black suit
Bow Tie tied neatly
A perfect knot and long coat tail
Takes the tools he needs for day's task
From black bag beside sweaty bed
Heads downstairs for another day
Just another job
Humming a sweet hymnal
As he climbs gallow stairs
Loops the noose tight 'round
Poor neck and offers cigarette
Politely as expected
Pulls black hood if requested
Awaits the nod and drops the trap
To cheers and jeers and sobs
Collects his bits of silver
Packs his gear and bags
And long-tailed pet rat
Has buggy hitched and hits the road
Dusty, humming hymnals
In his creaky old black buggy
Without a thought to next job
Down Georgia way
The hangman and his gear
Long-tailed rat and sleepy mule
Another day another dollar
r
6 Sept 13
Sep 6, 2013
Sep 6, 2013 at 5:11 PM UTC
Dreams either come true
or they burn into stars
But the way you
whispered hymnals into my head
Bones break into a million pieces
causing organs to fail
I let you tear my bones
and now my heart is missing
Windows are foggy from the heat
I guess that's why I couldn't see
And the night sky was closed
But your eyes created the darkness
If you stare at the ceiling long enough
the walls will start to cave in
I learned this from you
And my eyes turned black that night
You didn't let me speak but
I'm glad you kept humming
Street lights are supposed to lighten the street
But they darkened your clothes
I found my heart this morning
the blood draining between my fingers
See, I was never sad about you
But I kept tripping on the smoke
I can't tell if you know about me anymore
You never really did
And I couldn't look at you because
I was scared what I would find
Dreams either come true
or they burn into stars
But you whispered to me and
My dreams burned stars into my soul
Dec 6, 2014
Dec 6, 2014 at 2:43 PM UTC
"salt of salvation"
solution dissolves it.
sought something else;
sacrilegion, so-call it.
buried beneath
burning books,
sacred sheets
shroud and burrow
below born and being.
pressed between pages
like pallor-pink petals
there, stashed, surreptitious
in songs and the hymnals:
"for sweet, sweet salvation,
suppress all temptation
so thwarting damnation
on high."
I'll believe
what I see
when I die.
Jun 22, 2015
Jun 22, 2015 at 11:54 PM UTC
arranged all in rows
tamed
well life is not like that
it comes with dissonances
and travails
and the blessed part is,
surprisingly,
is the best things are always
bittersweet.
I can rhyme,
I can sing,
I know cadence and hymnals and
all the various structures
you wanna stuff life into
it don't work that way,
if you do say pose a prose or poem
or problem in one way
there are ten million at least
gonna not see it.
life is not a box all
geometric symmetrically
straight lined x equals y
nor are lives
life stinks a lot
I guess
what I am proposing
is why make it seem
like anything
but what it is
a struggle
U struggle I struggle
to make sense of it all and it's too big
too vast
too complicated
I like flowers
Buttercups among my favorites
but sometimes I hate them too
because i like dandelions
and the man is trying to grow only
flowers
Oct 29, 2016
Oct 29, 2016 at 12:41 AM UTC
I will die,
but what am I?
There are footprints in the dust
behind me,
for a breath of seconds,
the span of decades.
They fade to breeze,
like echoes of a nameless lullaby.
I gaze at my hands.
The veins shrivel,
muscles deteriorate,
bones crumble.
In the minute vastness,
I see a reflection,
distorted by mortal
destruction.
I push forward.
Daunting truths
reverberating,
like hymnals.
My steps will,
one day,
cease leaving marks and
become part of
the dirt.
In a space of unlimited
light and sound,
What am I?
*“Your existence is a burgeoning leaf,
growing and breathing
to change with the passing of seasons
and one day…
Let go.
Carried by the wind
to destinations unknown."*
In a sea of vibrations and
energy,
what am I?
*"Moonlight in a shadowed forest.
Tenacious wind, unfurling sails.
A bird building nests
through a storm.
Impassioned tears, of a lost love.
The distorted reflection
staring back
at you.”*
Through all the screams
of arrogance
and shame,
An ethereal voice
continues to
chant.
What are we,
in a land of eternity?
*"You are more and less than egos know.
Countless footprints
are left to dust,
but each one in the same.
Every step
and grain of sand is
you."*
What are we
in such a fragment of the
cosmos?
What are we,
in such fleeting of moments?
*“I am everything.
You are everything.”*
One day I will die
…but what am I?
Sep 27, 2018
Sep 27, 2018 at 10:29 PM UTC
angel wings shielded my vision as i peeked at you through silky white feathers;
i whispered in a devil voice "i will make you feel what you never imagined--
i hold holy secrets and unholy sins"
i got on my knees for him but god knocked me from grace
(i am a fallen angel tempting sinners, lovers, fathers and hopeless romantics)
cut off my wings
remove your ring
undo the buttons on the stiff white shirt, beg me to fill what was lost on sermons and hymnals
(moonlight illuminated my naked body)
(i made a deal with the devil while i danced beneath the stars)
come willingly to the edge and fly away with me or
fight my siren song and face the hand of god
Sep 30, 2015
Sep 30, 2015 at 12:39 AM UTC
Frothy white hymnals jammed in naked pupils
prowling in dusk and debris,
Howl through the decade shone in the east.
The distant loom shimmers across a nimble field,
Exciting the crown which lay heavy a second time.
You scramble in your sweat weeping through the seat.
A tiny fleet flutters only but an instance.
Forgotten what for? Forgotten why?
Aug 3, 2013
Aug 3, 2013 at 6:10 PM UTC
There is something about churches—
the sanctuary filling slowly,
brass ***** pipes arrayed like halberds
in a medieval arsenal,
stooped ushers handing out programs
as the congregation
accumulates softly
like snow.
And the pulpit—like a queen
in a hive of wooden pews
all of polished walnut,
stands hushed and expectant.
(I know within that pulpit
there is a place to put cough drops,
a legal pad, second pair of glasses.)
Sanctuaries have a peculiar smell,
redolent of potted lilies,
Youth Dew perfume,
aging hymnals,
the suspired breath
of five hundred faithful
lifting their voices to that soaring
Byzantine dome.
I was glad for your presence that day,
the sound of your marvelous
voice, the warm sense
of your shoulder next to mine.
You cradled a hymnal
benevolently in your hand
as though you were baptizing a child.
"Jesus Christ is risen today, Alleluia!"
I sang more loudly, I suppose,
for gratitude that you were with me.
I held my hymnal with more care,
sang and looked up more hopefully
to that pulpit than I might otherwise
have done on any given Easter.
I prayed more ardently for good things to happen,
thought more kindly of the man
beside me who wouldn’t make room
when we three entered the pew
but stared blandly ahead as if
waiting for an opera to begin.
When the minister spread his arms
in benediction and bade us all go in peace,
we stayed to hear the postlude
and watch the Easter crowd
wind its way to the narthex
and spill out into the boisterous
parade on Fifth Avenue.
I sat there and listened with you
as the organist played his sonorous farewell.
When I was a boy sitting next to you in church,
you might gently pat my thigh
when the organist’s final note
passed through the sanctuary
like a great bird in flight.
You would smile as if to say,
“You made it through the whole service!”
On this Easter, when the hymn began,
and the mighty ***** notes swelled around us
like God’s own voice in song,
it was the thought of your shoulder near mine,
your hands upon the pew,
that halted my singing for a moment,
to let a silent bolt of longing
pass through me
like a solitary dog crossing a road.
Then it was gone, the thought,
but so, too, was your palpable nearness,
the idea of your voice
ringing through the church
like a celebration.
Apr 19, 2017
Apr 19, 2017 at 4:45 PM UTC